Back To Life, Back To Reality

I don’t know if it escaped you but the Beatles broke up over the past few days, prime minister Harold Wilson looks like retiring, and Richard Nixon said he thinks this new fangled flower power thing will die out soon.

This week I felt that I was in a bad Sixties movie, all Albert Finney shouting at Rita Tushingham in the rain and everything available only in black and white, and I would not have been surprised at one point to see Gene Kelly swinging round a lamppost and jumping in puddles. I feel I stepped in to the Tardis and flew back to a time when typists manned customer service desks and filed their nails rather than complaints.

I’ve written about this before, which probably shows I’m becoming an angry old man, but what is it about some businesses that it seems a badge of pride to keep their customer service stuck in monochrome? Twice in the past week or two I have been left wanting to scream, shout, kick the cat and then send the vet’s bill to the companies that have driven me insane with customer service operators who are thicker than Russell Brand’s mattress. If a new tax was brought in on brain cells they wouldn’t pay a penny.

My satellite TV provider and the company who look after the water softener in my house should be shamed, exposed, have custard pies thrown at them, be made to clean toilets at a camel race in the desert and then forced to watch Loose Women. Well, maybe the Loose Women thing is a bit much, but, like the camels, you get my drift.

On a global scale of things to worry about (war, credit crunch and the decline of Coronation Street) I realise satellite TV and water softener employees making me mad is small beer, and that you’re probably thinking anyone who needs a water softener is a great big wuss anyway, but I just hate the rudeness and incompetence of some companies, especially since so many others seem to have smartened up their act and got it right.

Incidentally, I need the water company to stop the pipes in my house furring up with lime and not, as you probably thought when looking at my photo, to keep my amazing baby like skin soft and gentle. They didn’t call me after promising that they would ring back immediately, leaving me to do all the chasing for a whole week, and then didn’t even apologise when I finally got hold of them for the fourth time. The satellite telly company, meanwhile, made me take three different mornings off work to get my box renewed, turning up each time with replacements that didn’t work. And again, as that great philosopher Elton of Pinner said, “sorry seems to be the hardest word”. Apology? You are so clearly kidding that I am now laughing in HD.

These companies are like The Fonz in Happy Days, but without the laughs. Arthur Fonzarelli, memorably, couldn’t ever say “sorry” for anything and the word stuck in his throat so that he’d get as far as “I’m sssssss” before going quiet again. Mind you, at least he tried.

Eventually, the TV people agreed that my taking mornings off was getting ridiculous so they said I should call them the day before on a special number at four o’clock and get a more specific time when the engineer would arrive. So, I did call at the appointed hour. It was an answering machine telling me the office was closed.

None the wiser I waited next day and the bloke, who I had been wrongly promised would phone me, turned up just before lunchtime. When I vented my frustration he, disarmingly, agreed with every word and told me he spends his working day apologising for his employer.

So, I’ve had enough. I can do the rude thing too, just like the head of customer service at the water softener company who was so soft himself he put me on hold and didn’t come back. I’m hoping it was because his car was nicked or his house broken in to and his stamp collection flushed down the toilet.

Behaving badly is easy, but being nice takes more effort. I can act like a badly brought up waste of skin who has never been taught that the word “sorry” goes a long way too. I’m going to stop my payments to these companies and, when they call to ask why, I’ll say that I’ll call them straight back.

And then I’ll go on holiday.